CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO: Service and Subpoenas

YEAR FIVE

House Account:  $1,970.95

#Mortgage: $565.26

Why was I not surprised when Diane ignored my #eviction notice? At the beginning of April, I drew up a #petition, got a court date assigned for April 22nd, and had a process server serve the petition upon Diane.  To Diane's surprise, the process server went to her place of employment, talked his way into the inner sanctum of the office, and duly served the petition on her.

Over the next two weeks, I continued to stew over what to do about my previous non-paying tenant, Charmayne.  Should I just give up and forget about getting any money out of her?  Before I even finished that thought, however, I sternly told myself, “No! Stick to your guns. Charmayne should be made to face the consequences of her actions . . . or lack thereof.” I filled in the restraining notices to garnishee.

During lunch, I drove to the Clerk’s Office in Schemmerhorn to look in Charmayne's personal injury court case file.  To my dismay, the folder now contained a Release and Stipulation of Discontinuance.  Charmayne and her pal had settled their case for $25,000.00 each!  I was too late.

In disgust, I tore up the restraining notices. Because of my hesitation to serve my own law firm employer with a restraining notice, I'd lost out.  Now I couldn’t serve the defendant, either. What a bummer!

Time for Plan B?

If I had $25,000.00, what would I do with it?  Maybe I could send information #subpoenas and restraining notices to all the banks in Schemmerhorn in the hope that Charmayne had deposited her settlement money in one of them.  She may not have had a bank account in the past but now with $25,000.00 burning a hole in her pocket, she had to put it somewhere.  I didn’t know then that the Department of Social Services would likely take a large chunk of it.  Public assistance is actually considered a loan, and #D.S.S. is always the first to be reimbursed, should one of their recipients receive a large settlement.  Come to think of it, that was probably what had happened to the $14,000.00 paid to my previous #tenant, Mamie.

I still had some restraining notices left over that I could use, and I bought some information subpoenas from the legal supply store. They only sold triplicates, and I made more copies at the office.  After dinner, I paged through the Yellow Pages and found twelve banks that had branches in Schemmerhorn.  I set to at once, filling out the information subpoenas and restraining notices in my best handwriting. My typewriter was still broken, and Rita's old typewriter, which I'd kept from my previous job, wasn't the most reliable of machines.

At the office the next day, I told another friendly lawyer about Plan B.  She agreed it was a good idea to explore the banks but suggested I call the Clerk’s office to check whether or not the information subpoenas had to be stamped by the Clerk before mailing them out.  I was glad for this advice because when I called the Clerk’s Office, they advised me that the Small Claims Department had its own information subpoenas, and some banks did require the Clerk's stamp.  As it happened,  my eviction proceeding with Diane was the next day.  I could kill two birds with one stone. 

I arrived at City Hall a little early and sat down in the court room to await the morning's proceedings.  To my amazement, Diane actually showed up a few minutes later.  I don’t think she recognized me because she herded two young children over to where I was sitting and sat down right next to me.

"Diane," I said.  She jumped and turned to look at me, surprised.

"Do you have any #rent for me?" I asked bluntly.

She looked a little sheepish and began rummaging in the depths of her capacious purse.  "I sent you a money order a few weeks ago,” she said. “Three hunnerd dollars.  Din't you get it?"

“No. I only got the one for February."

"Oh, gawd. I got the receipt here somewhere."  She rummaged some more and finally produced a grubby yellow carbon copy of a money order.  She peered at it shortsightedly.  "If this bin lost, what can ah do?"

"Aren't there instructions in the small print?"  I joined her in peering at the smudged form.  "Yes, there."  I pointed at the appropriate phrase.

"Oh, yeah," Diane said.  "Okay, I'm gonna git down theah fust thing in the mornin' and complain.”

"Okay."

Diane's dark face took on an earnest expression.  "I can give you another four hunnerd on May first.  I'm workin' extra hours, an' I'm going on a interview next week.  Gawd, ah hope ah git da job.  Then I'll be able to pay you some more."

"You have to do something, Diane," I said. “I can't wait forever, and you never answer my letters or phone calls.  What am I supposed to think?  It seems the only way I can communicate with you is by taking you to Court.  It’s a waste of my time and yours, but it's the only way I can actually talk to you."

"Yeah, yeah.  I know," My errant tenant flashed a sheepish grin.  "I had to take time off work to come ‘ere today too.  Is hard, you know?

"Tell me about it!"

She patted my knee, conspiratorially.  "I sure hope I get dat job.  I really wanna pay you what I owe you."

I stifled a dubious grunt.  "Hm, well, our case is the first on the list this morning, so as soon as the judge shows up, we can get started."

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Typing Hell

I borrowed Rita's #typewriter, a heavy, old clunker of a machine. I had to type out the #eviction #petition I’d bought earlier at the legal supply store, and my own typewriter was broken. (Gives you an idea of when this whole #landlord saga took place!!)

Normally I’d type the petition at the office during my free time, but seeing as I was currently the sole secretary/paralegal/Girl Friday for five attorneys – the other secretaries being either out sick or at the track gambling on the horses – I was slightly short of a spare moment.

Anyway, I needed to work out what I wanted to say, and from past experience it might take a few attempts for me to get it right. I made ten copies of the blank petition just in case.

I was so glad I did! 

I sat down at the dining room table, unloaded the clunker, and turned it on. It came to life with an asthmatic wheeze and chuntered to itself for a while before settling down to a steady chug-chug.

I inserted the first petition, began to type, and instantly made my first mistake.

"Damn it! No corrector ribbon!" I ripped the sheet of paper out of the machine.

Faced with the lack of correction tape and visions of looming typos as a result, I instantly became a gibbering wreck. My fingers hovered tremblingly over the keys for several seconds before plucking up the courage to press one. My typing speed plummeted from eighty to twenty as my eyes darted nervously back and forth, keeping an eagle eye out for a fingertip about to inadvertently hit the wrong key.

I rolled the second petition into the clunker and began again to type, oh so carefully.  The ribbon was old because no one had used the typewriter for ages. Thus the inked letters it produced came out so faint as to be almost invisible. I had to type everything twice to make the words bold enough to read, thus doubling the risk of making a mistake.

Despite my double-striking each character with a vengeance, everything went well until the carriage approached the far right-hand side of the form. Readers of this blog, who were alive in the typewriter age, will know that a warning bell is supposed to sound when the typewriter carriage approaches the right margin. This reminds the typist that it's time to move down to the next line.  Well, Rita’s old clunker did not sound the warning bell. Instead, it suddenly decided it had reached its self-determined right margin and would go no farther. It then proceeded to type the next few characters on top of one another, creating an inky, black mess.

"Dammit!" I groaned again and yanked that page out too.

This time I inserted the petition at the far left side of the carriage roller in order to extend my typing area. I’d learned one thing, though: don’t fill in the Court and party information at the beginning. Go straight to the meaty "Description of Facts" and fill in the rest later.

I stewed over the wording for the description and actually managed to type out the whole thing without a mistake. However, on reading it over, I decided I didn’t like it and yanked the page out.

I began again for the fourth time. This time I liked the new wording but made a mistake somewhere near the bottom.

"Dammit," came the ubiquitous explosion. "I need Whiteout!" (i.e. Typex, Liquid Paper, correction fluid ...)

I ransacked Wim's desk, but to no avail: no Whiteout to be found. Where else could I look? Ah, hah! I distinctly remembered buying some for the kids’ school supplies.

Andrea and Bronwyn were peacefully engaged in watching television in their basement playroom when the door at the top of the stairs burst open, and their mother erupted onto the scene.

Bronwyn looked up as I fixed her with my feverish gaze.

"Whiteout?" I gargled incoherently.

She shrugged a shoulder, not the least bit perturbed at the sight of her mom having one of her manic fits.

"All dried up," she replied nonchalantly before turning her attention back to the TV.

"Andrea?" I pleaded. My other daughter didn’t even bother looking my way as she shrugged both her shoulders.

"Dunno," she drawled around a mouthful of braces and forbidden chewing gum.

I knew it was no use. From past experience, the likelihood of finding decent Whiteout in the various old pencil cases scattered about the place was next to none. I pawed halfheartedly through the remnants of at least three-years’ worth of blunt pencils, half-melted Crayolas -- both in and out of their wrappers -- dried up felt-tip pens without their tops on, and sharpener-shavings, before giving up the search.

"Thanks so much for your help. Like I'm doing something important here!" I pouted and stomped up the stairs in frustration.

I gloomily surveyed my dining room table. It was littered with six or seven crumpled balls of petition. "This is ridiculous," I told myself sternly.  "You’ve been slaving over this thing for a whole hour. Just do it!"

Right. I sat down and typed on a scrap piece of paper exactly what I wanted to say in the Description of Facts. And what do you know? Not one typo, apart from some crossings-out where I changed my mind.

I started on a new petition, made a couple of mistakes, but to hell with it. 

I finally finished typing and rolled the form out of the clunker. Now for the signature. Oh, no! It had to be notarized. Although I myself was a notary public, #notaries aren’t permitted to #notarize their own signatures, and Wim was to file the petition the next morning in City Court. 

What to do?

Wild thoughts of driving across town to Rita’s house raced through my head. It was late though, and her notary stamp was probably at the office.

I considered going to work early in the morning in the hope that an attorney would be present to notarize my signature. Early enough that I could deliver the petition back home to Wim and return to work by nine o’clock. No. With travel time, I’d have to get to the office really early, and there was no guarantee of an attorney being there.

I could get it notarized at a bank, but banks only open at nine o'clock. I’d  be late for work and, as I mentioned before, we were short-staffed that week.

I searched the form for a way out of my predicament and, voila, there was a check box for permitting "Agent of Petitioner" to file the petition. I checked it. Now my "agent" Wim could sign it before a notary public at City Hall and file it with the Clerk.

I set off for the office the next morning in a hopeful mood. Not too hopeful, mind you.

The plan was for Wim to first stop by the Schemmerhorn #building inspector's office to pick up the report of code violations and try to talk him into declaring the upstairs apartment unfit for human habitation due to the water leak. If that failed, he would go ahead and sign and file the petition to evict Kristina.

Twelve o'clock struck. Wim strode into my office like a stick insect atop bony legs four feet long.

"Did you get the report?" I asked.

"Yah, but the inspector wasn't in so I couldn't talk to him."  My heart sank as Wim waved a piece of paper at me. It looked suspiciously like my original petition.

"They wouldn't accept my signature," he said.

I groaned. Naturally I’d left my folder of blank petitions at home.

"Can you white out my signature and put yours there instead?” Wim suggested. “Get it notarized and I'll take it back to Schemmerhorn right now."

While he stepped outside for a smoke, I whited out his signature, photocopied the petition, and signed my name. Rita notarized it. Wim returned soon after amidst a haze of just-exhaled cigarette smoke. He collected the petition and left. 

I crossed my thumbs and returned to work.